“I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
–King Solomon (excerpt form Ecclesiastes 2:10-11)
If you’re searching for meaning, what better place to find the answer than on the Internet? That’s exactly what I did. As the picture above shows, I Googled “what is the purpose of life” and got a mere two billion results. Apparently, it’s something a lot of us humans are searching for. Meaning is defined as the purpose for which something is done or created; the purpose for which something exists. Meaning is synonymous with purpose.
Rather than sifting through all two billion results to find the purpose of life, I decided to take a shortcut. I went to the words of King Solomon found in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. The Bible states that his “wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt.” He had it all, and then some. His pursuit of it all brought him to this conclusion: The pursuit of our desires is meaningless. But pursuing God pays off. King Solomon sums it up this way – “fear God and do what he tells you.”
Some might say that this life is meaningless because it’s full of pain. Philosopher and poet, G.K.Chesterton, disagreed: “Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.” King Solomon would say that pursuing meaning from things is a waste of time. He tried to prove otherwise, only to find the greatest things in life weren’t things at all.
Pastor John Piper says pursuing the wrong things is not only a waste of time, but also a tragic waste of your life. In a sermon delivered in the early 2000s, Piper shares the following:
“I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who “took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.” At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn’t. Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life – your one and only precious, God-given life – and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great Day of Judgment: “Look, Lord. See my shells.” That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over and against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.”
Jesus warned, “You can’t serve two masters.” He said we were created for a purpose – to add flavor and light to a world that is lost in its pursuit of pleasure:
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-16)
How are you spending your time and your resources? To what pursuits are you currently devoting your life? Meaning and purpose are not difficult to find, as long as we’re looking in the right place. Lean into Jesus, not into the pursuit of worldly things. So much is available, but only one thing provides meaning; Jesus Christ. What will your last great work be? Don’t waste your time or your life.
To see what the Bible says about purpose and meaning, click here.
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